Posted by Kelly Belmonte in The Creative Process | 10 Comments
Passion is Overrated
I’ve got a bone to pick with the passion pushers. Have you heard any of these?
- You need to identify your passion and go after it.
- Your passion drives your success
- Turn your passion into profit
- Be passionate about your work and others will follow
Etc. etc. Cringe.
Maybe it’s that I have the wrong description of the word. I have an image in my head of Robin Williams in Dead Poets Society standing on top of his desk shouting, “Oh Captain, my Captain” to a room full of freaked out prep school boys.
I am picturing eye-popping, sweat-inducing emotion, the like of which I can rarely conjure unless in response to some extreme physical pain (mothers, think “labor”). All those schmaltzy Hollywood films and books and news stories come to mind, the ones about baseball and the driven athlete, and how he hits a homerun at just the right moment after what seems a lifetime of sweat, tears, and passionate commitment.
Double, triple cringe.
See, I just can’t relate. I’m a steady Eddie. I do stuff because I decide to do it, probably because I like it, because it’s a responsibility, because it’s the right thing to do, because I got distracted and thought it looked interesting. A gazillion and one reasons for doing a billion and five things, and passion rarely enters that decision making process.
The most important thing, to me, that drives success and creates satisfaction, harmony, profit, and other positive outcomes in life is the decision-making itself. Granted, part of the decision about how to spend your time is what you like to do and what you are good at doing. But to me, liking something and being good at it is not the same thing as passion.
That’s just me. I’ve always liked writing. It pleases me. Words please me. Making stuff up with words pleases me. So I wrote and wrote and wrote, and still write and write and write. And one hopes that the more I do that, the better I’ll get at it. And the better I get, the more I will gain satisfaction from it because not only will I be pleased with the result, but others will as well.
Is that passion? Well, if it means standing up on a desk and “Yalping” … you can have it. Deciding moves beyond passion. Some days I will be filled with inspiration and can’t wait to get into the writing groove. But there are those other days when I’d rather scrub the bathroom floor with my toothbrush than write. Even on those days, though, I write, because I decided a long time ago that this is what I do.
Passion is overrated. Just decide what you’re going to do for the next ten minutes, two days, four weeks, three months, year. And do it. Stop wasting time trying to “find your passion.” Make it your duty to yourself and passion will follow. Sometimes. When it doesn’t, keep going anyway.
There are better ways to know if your decisions are good ones than how you passionately you feel about them.
Thank you, Kelly, for once more saying just what I need to hear, right when I need to hear it, at this time of year when my nearly-non-existent-to-begin-with stores of exuberance are at their lowest ebb.
Becka, you are very, and always, welcome. Thank you.
This is such an encouraging piece for me as well. The flip side of ‘follow your passion!’ (etc.) is that if one doesn’t feel particularly passionate at the moment, then it’s easy to feel like that’s somehow one’s own fault. If only I were full of passion! then my writing would flow from my keyboard without effort! and I’d be fired up every moment of the day! (And if not, then somehow I’m missing the essential piece.)
One of the longer pieces I wrote this fall was one that I wrote in half-hour stints, here and there, over a few weeks, just plugging along at it steadily when I had time. I rather wished for a burst of inspiration to get me motivated to write big swathes of it at once, but that didn’t happen. It wasn’t a very exciting-sounding writing process, but the piece turned out pretty well…and I derived a great deal of satisfaction from seeing it all come together… bit by bit. Steady Eddie for me, thanks.
Keep plugging away, my friend.
Wow! you dared to say what has nibbled at my consciousness at times. It sounds so good to say ‘follow your bliss!” That sells books, but like you so succinctly explain, a lot of life is just not passion-producing. And if you think about the 10,000 hour rule (Outliers – malcolm gladwell), I’m sure most of those hours were just sheer discipline and a lot of ‘why am I doing this?’
I’m going to chew on this and let it percolate down.
By the way, my husband writes well, but the process is painful. He only likes it when he has birthed it! He has a love-hate relationship with writing.
Thanks for letting my thoughts percolate in your brain for a bit! I think much of my perspective is simply preferred style and personality. Yes, I think those 10,000 hours (Gladwell) have to be made up of a lot of simple slogging, and that’s ok with me. My sympathies to your husband… the process, oh the process! Best wishes to you both.
I follow my passions, but these are passions that have come out of years of working through long hours, months of discouragement, and the minutia of Monday to Monday. My passions come out of my central passion, which is the commitment to my vocation–my calling. It is, therefore, as limiting as it is freeing. And it begins when I sit down at my desk at 6:00am, and when I close my laptop at the end of the day. Even then, it is subservient to my relationships, and any one of my many passionate words is air compared to my location, my situation, my being-in-life.
Kelly, I think what you say here is absolutely essential.
Thank you, Brenton. The words you use — commitment and calling — resonate with me more than “passion.”
Hello Kelly – I know this post is from last year but wanted to mention how uplifting it was for me. I lost a job of 13 years in 2009 and have worked contract positions every since. I am looking for a new position and have been unemployed for about 4 months. I read all of the articles on getting a job and I am so tired of hearing, “find your passion”, “show your passion in an interview”, “being passionate about your work makes it worth doing”. If you are not someone who feels this burning passion for work or any one thing for that matter then these statements make you feel inadequate. I don’t know if the word is just misused or what but I am so with you on this one. Thank you for finally saying it. Not everyone in life has this one burning passion that drives their actions. And indeed, passion is not necessary to lead a productive and fulfilling life, Desire on the other hand is. Thank you!
Beth, I’ve had some similar experiences in recent years, and it is in fact part of what drove the writing of this piece. I’m glad this was encouraging for you.